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California does have geothermal potential, the rest of the US does not.

Really? Because I could have sworn the largest geothermal upwelling on the planet is located in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho.

If you do the research and the arithmetic, you find that renewables can make a significant impact - 11% to 13% of our total energy needs.

Bullshit, wind and solar alone can potentially generate many, many times our current energy demands. To get an idea of just how little land would be needed to generate our current needss with even junk solar cells check out this page which has a handy graph showing 6 solar farms in desert areas that would work. Now granted, that's approximately twice the area that we currently occupy with road and parking structures, but it would be completely possible if we were to set it as a goal like we did with reaching the moon, put 5-10% of global GDP for the next few decades to work on converting to 100% renewables and we could get there easily. The problem is not the technology, or the availability, it is the will to do what we know must be done, because it is harder than the current path which we know leads to problems.

California does have geothermal potential, the rest of the US does not.

Really? Because I could have sworn the largest geothermal upwelling on the planet is located in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho.

If you do the research and the arithmetic, you find that renewables can make a significant impact - 11% to 13% of our total energy needs.

Bullshit, wind and solar alone can potentially generate many, many times our current energy demands. To get an idea of just how little land would be needed to generate our current needss with even junk solar cells check out this page which has a handy graph showing 6 solar farms in desert areas that would work. Now granted, that's approximately twice the area that we currently occupy with road and parking structures, but it would be completely possible if we were to set it as a goal like we did with reaching the moon, put 5-10% of global GDP for the next few decades to work on converting to 100% renewables and we could get there easily. The problem is not the technology, or the availability, it is the will to do what we know must be done, because it is harder than the current path which we know leads to problems.

I agree. Ideally the whole country and the world should run on fully wind, solar and hydro, and then we can ban things like nuclear, and even coal and natural gas burnt for simply electric power in major power plants, not used as a chemical feedstock. And there is enough solar input to the world to cover the world's energy needs, true it does require a huge huge huge area and infrastructure. See the image by Matthias Loster, for what kind of area would be needed to supply all of the world's energy needs(including transportation, industrial, household, etc,) if it were based on silicon based solar cells, at: http://commons.wikimedia.org/w... also at http://www.ez2c.de/ml/solar_la...

Note that the black dots on that picture represent a huge huge huge area of land fully covered with solar cells, possibly beyond our economic means to accomplish, so we may need, at least for the present time, a secure fallback on high energy density and guaranteed availability, no bullshit nuclear power. But we should make all effort and strive for the ability to leave behind nuclear completely, and fully rely on renewables only.

The calculations at http://www.ez2c.de/ml/solar_land_area/ with optimal array placement came up with slightly different numbers, fwiw.

Though granted, the overnight storage would definitely be a challenge if solar scaled that high, and a lot more long-distance transmission lines would be needed.

Correct - the same thing the article states about wind could easily be said about solar.

Could you show your math? After all, these guys do, and they get that at 8% efficiency, half of NM would cover all US energy consumption. I don't know if that includes transport and conversion losses, though.

http://www.ez2c.de/ml/solar_land_area/

(it NEVER hurts)

(now, people complaining about storing energy for night-time, can start ranting NOW!)

The energy density can be 200+W per square meter. I consider this is very high. http://www.ez2c.de/ml/solar_land_area/ has more information.

I don't know how much people can be consider "most". But I know all the people don't want to pay utility bills.

Solar and windmills make subtle effect to environment while coal power plant makes significant if not dramatic effect on the environment.

Solar and fusion may ultimately solve our energy quest together.

When he meant forever, he meant FOREVER: http://www.ez2c.de/ml/solar_land_area/
And that's only using the crappy 8% technology we currently have...

Imagine stirling solar: http://www.stirlingenergy.com/

Solar means 'forever'. P2P Electricity is the future...

Putting the solar energy collectors where they don't work best isn't the idea.

With all respect, solar energy needs to be the future... http://www.ez2c.de/ml/solar_land_area/